My Name Is Earl: "Stole an RV"Review

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Earl helps a war veteran get on with his life.

By Jonah Krakow

My Name Is Earl aired a second new episode on Thursday night, but for all the character depth the previous episode contained, this episode just felt flat. This isn't to say it was a bad episode, but it felt a little formulaic and silly. Sure, Earl helped out a person he had wronged in the past and Randy and Joy acted like idiots, but the end result was a collection of separate parts that make up an Earl episode, not the emotional whole.

In the beginning of the episode, Earl was reminded of the time when he, Joy and Randy stole an RV and went vacationing to different tourist spots. Unfortunately, Randy left the gas on and the RV blew up. This was just par for the course in Earl's life. In order to cross this item off his list, Earl had to locate Jerry (Jerry Van Dyke), the owner and make it up to him, in any way that didn't involve buying him a new RV. When Earl and Randy found him, he was sitting all alone in a tiny shack, literally waiting to die. They learned that all of Jerry's mementos of his life and his dead wife were in that RV. So Earl helped Jerry regain the will to live by recovering or replacing those items.

Like we said, this was one of the sillier episodes of Earl. Along with Earl's karma list mission, there were two small subplots that were mildly entertaining, but didn't do much to move the story along, nor did they do much to further develop the characters. The first subplot involved Randy finding an old hat at a bus stop, causing him to take on a British accent and act like an old fuddy-duddy. Through a voiceover, Earl informed us that whenever Randy found a hat, he would adopt a different persona, depending on its style. (For example, a sombrero gave him a Spanish accent, while a cowboy hat had him talking like John Wayne.) The second subplot involved Joy and Darnell attempting to catch "Pigsquatch," a giant creature they hoped to exploit for tourist dollars. Not surprisingly, their plan failed when the creature died after ingesting too much food baited with Joy's sleeping pills.

Ethan Suplee as Randy Hickey

However, the silliest turn of events came when Earl and Randy got Jerry out of his funk and took him to the house of an old war buddy named Joe (John Amos). Jerry claimed he wanted to visit to pick up a unique souvenir, but that souvenir turned out to be Joe's ear. In the war, Jerry and Joe were caught behind enemy lines. Jerry had cut off Joe's ear to prevent him from leaving Jerry behind to die. Needless to say, this act didn't convince Joe to stick around. Now that they're both old and tired, neither one has forgotten about the incident and Jerry wants revenge. With Earl and Randy trapped inside Joe's house, they fended off Jerry's attacks to get the ear.

The logic behind cutting off someone's ear to keep them from leaving seems a little far-fetched, but the episode got really silly when old man Jerry was hanging like a ninja above Joe's doorway, waiting to pounce. It became even more unlikely when, moments later, both old men were struggling to breathe and nearly having heart attacks.

This episode had all of the components that make up a good Earl episode: Earl teaching someone a lesson about life, Earl and Randy getting involved in things pertaining to fire and violence, and Randy and Joy acting like idiots. The problem was, the show never went beyond cookie-cutter plot devices or characterizations. We never felt much empathy towards Jerry or Joe because their story just wasn't as interesting or developed. This is in stark contrast to the episode that aired immediately beforehand about Joy and her parenting skills, or last week's episode with filmmaker Buddy Zaks (Seth Green). Those episodes managed to include plenty of jokes and craziness while still delivering emotional moments as well. This one wasn't bad, but after a strong start to the season, the bar has been raised and we know they can do much better.